Hans Asperger, the Austrian pediatrician who pioneered studies in autism and gave his name to the Asperger's syndrome, "actively collaborated" on a Nazi program under which hundreds of disabled children were murdered, according to an academic paper published on Thursday.

According to medical historian Herwig Czech, Asperger directly referred two disabled girls to the notorious Am Spiegelgrund children's clinic in Vienna, where some 800 children were murdered under the Nazi's euthanasia program.

Asperger also belonged to a medical commission that screened some 200 children at a home for the mentally disabled. Of those, 35 were sent to the Am Spiegelgrund clinic and killed.